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Artist Discovery: Live Music Blog & Big Gigantic

Our Artist Discovery Series is a once-a-week feature, highlighting the must-see acts from a small group of the country’s best music bloggers. Whether exploring buzz-garnering newcomers or re-visiting well-established headliners, these artists profiles take a closer look at the wide range of talent heading to Grant Park in August. Today’s feature comes from Live Music Blog’s Justin Ward.

If you’re one of the few folks hitting up music festivals this year that has NOT heard of the electronic duo known as Big Gigantic, this will be the year where you hear about them more than any other previous year. And given their current rise and trajectory, I have no doubt that your 2013 festival announcements will see the name “Big Gigantic” get bigger and bigger and bigger on the festival lineup posters as the months fly by…
First, a little context: EDM is effing huge right now. Everyone is putting money into the genre that keeps the kids moving and swaying and dancing; Lollapalooza has a HUGE set of amazing EDM artists this year which really hits to the current “fad” (or perhaps movement) sweeping across the festival crowds. It’s a vibe about dancing, being sweaty, having fun, finding a girl in the crowd to kiss, etc. It’s a joyous raucous celebration of sounds, synths, hips, feet and neon colors. Drugs, bottled water and stupid furry boots, right?! It’s always been so much more than that, and seeing the crowd at this year’s Lollapalooza bounce in unison to a Bassnectar dubstep drop WILL be the highlight of your festival, I can promise you that.
Big Gigantic is way different than the current swath of EDM artists that you keep seeing headlines about in the bigger trades. These guys came up in the livetronica scene straight out of Colorado, and they’ve been gracing stages at the jammier festivals around the country for the past two years. I caught them absolutely slay a stage last summer, and this year the audience in Chicago’s Grant Park will hear the electro-sax-whomp-whomp vibe that these guys put out with ferocity. As you can see, these guys are not to be missed. They play on Sunday, 5:45 pm at Perry’s.
I think the moment that hit me was seeing their remix of Aloe Blacc “I Need A Dollar” live; it’s fantastic. And below that, a pro-shot clip of how the band comes off live: